Phony Reviews Exposed/ Slapped with Fines
I read in a New York Times article, that in New York that it is now illegal to pass off reviews that are bought and paid for as authentic, peer reviews.
Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company had ordered some employees to write and post glowing reviews of their services. An email was found that instructed employees to,“devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client.”
They also created their own sites of face-lift reviews to appear as independent sources.
Apparently Lifestyle Lift learned of the power of reviews when their reputation and business suffered as a result of poor reviews. Too bad they did not improve their services instead.
False reviews have become more of a problem as more people rely on sites like Yelp, Amazon or Epinions to rate and learn about products and services
New York usually leads the pack when it comes to consumer protection issues and has fined Lifestyle Lift no less than 300K for encouraging fake reviews.
DeLohghi was recently caught having employees posting multiple positive reviews for their espresso machines. Amazon guidelines for reviews are very clear that reviews are to be written by those who purchase products on their site. Those reviews were pulled.
Belkin has also been caught offering to pay for positive reviews.
Peer reviews have become a cornerstone in today’s marketplace and many rely on their authenticity to make purchasing decisions. We are working on technologies that will be able to recognize and filter out phony reviews.
Until then, here are 3 things you can do. Take a moment and Google the username of a review or reviews you are reading. See what else they are reviewing. A red flag should go up if multiple products of the same brand and ilk appear. Also, take note of the tone of the review. People who have actually had an experience with the product will write differently about it and you will sense “them” in it. There will be an identifiable emotion in a real review. Lastly, look for corroboration,
if a feature or function is outstanding or conversely, disappointing, it likely will be mentioned in multiple reviews.
The success of review sites depends on readers trusting their content. Nothing says “Stop that Sh*t, quite like a large financial penalty. Good on New York for imposing a hefty fine to those who betray public trust. It should surely discourage the practice.
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Those are actually very good tips. Thanks
Sure! I just thought of another one that can help establish the site is authentic and not set up by the company that provides the product or service.
Go yo whois.com and type in the name of the website you are getting the reviews from. If, as in the case of the Cosmetic Surgery Company that set up a review site, they are the same, you can spot a common address, zip code, phone number or web administrator.
One of my take-aways from working with you was the idea of the closed-loop business process which becomes self-monitoring and exception-based.
Below is my complaint with online customer reviews and a possible solution.
Complaint:
As Carol has pointed out, people are lousy reviewers for several reasons forcing me to gauge the reviewer’s value while I’m trying to gauge the product’s value. This is an extra burden on me and only muddies the waters in my investigation.
Possible Solution:
Businesses need to champion the Customer Reviewer. Meaning, there should be some fame or fortune allocated to customers who provide meaningful product reviews with honest feedback. These Customer Reviewers are the “word of mouth” advertising that all business craves. The anonymous shopper needs a high quality review. The Customer Reviewer needs the respect of anonymous shoppers. The business needs the respected Customer Reviewer to convince the anonymous shopper to buy.
Of course this means the respected Customer Reviewer could torpedo a new product. But if the business is smart, they will bring their respected Customer Reviewers into the loop sooner to get honest independent feedback without the baggage of internal politics.
This is certainly more business process than analytical technology, however I think a solution would be needed to aggregate the reviews of respected Customer Reviewers across multiple product categories and companies. Perhaps I write great reviews of Blu-Ray players, Kayaks, and Espresso machines. The aggregation of that information would reveal any potential cross-promotional opportunities and accurate psychographic profile information.
Again sending this to you as I know you have an interest in this area, and I suspect a clever business with clever technology implemented could break into new ground. Perhaps reduce the value of dedicated online review sites?
Charles, you bring really good points.
I think the quantity and quality of customer reviews are on the increase as well as manufacturer’s attention to them. I have noticed that being in the business of development of tools for Customer Feedback Management (which is a part of Social CRM).
I disagree with your position on Respected Customer Reviewer – such people already exist as bloggers who specialize in reviewing specific groups of products, but as they gain following and attention of manufacturers, they stop becoming “Customers” It is common practice for influential bloggers to receive the products for review free of charge. One cannot automatically assume that it compromises their opinions, but their experience with products are not the same as a regular customer would have, and for that reason I threat them as “professional” reviewers, like those who work for magazines and CNET. For that reason a number of venues dedicated to “real” paying customers reviews will increase and bring more value to OEM and Consumers.
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Cheers! Sandra. R.
[...] well aware of unscrupulous, and not too smart, marketers who tried to game the system with widely publicized failures. However that very publicity seems to give us even more confidence in our “peers”, as [...]